Daniel gave up all hope of catching Wren’s eye and turned round to see what Roger was on about.

“All right,” he had to admit, after a few moments’ taking it in, “you don’t see it every day.”

Two jowls, stapled together by a grimace, and supervised by a stare: the face of George. Lots of clothing to hide his body-nothing unusual there, though, beyond that the clothes were nicer than those of the people massed around him: his Court. Most of these Daniel recognized from his visit to Hanover. He pointed out a few of them to Roger, who had heard of all of them-knew more about them, as it turned out, than Daniel did-but needed a sort of key by which rumors, slanders, calumnies, and salacious anecdotes could be mapped to faces. Pretty soon they were all shooting chilly looks Daniel’s way, even though he was only about the dozenth person in the queue. Perhaps it was because they had caught him pointing and muttering to Roger. More likely, though, it was because the last time they’d seen him, in Hanover, round the time of Sophie’s death, he had been pretending to be senile and useless. Then he had been named a Regent. No proof of compos mentis, that, but they’d read into it that he had pull over someone. Certainly not George. By process of elimination, then, he’d been influencing Princess Caroline.

Caroline did not even seem to be in the room. No, on second thought, there she was in the corner with her husband. They’d already drawn their own little shadow Court of mostly young, witty Londoners, all talking too much, laughing, and drawing evil looks from the old and not so witty, who tended to keep their faces turned toward the new King. It was weirdly obvious and bold: if you thought you’d live long enough to march in George I’s funeral procession, why then you would gravitate toward the future George II. Most had the decency and good form to hew to this general principle, but Daniel Waterhouse was fouling it up by being an old man in the young people’s camp. And here he was on the arm of the Marquis of Ravenscar!

“I’d best stop pointing and staring now, as we seem to’ve been noticed,” he said to Roger, trying to look as if he were making a remark about yesterday’s weather, “but in closing I’ll just add that you can see plainly enough the fat one and the skinny one.”

As tout le monde knew, these were George’s mistresses; his actual wife, of course, was still locked up in a dank Schlo? somewhere beyond the Weser.

“I had already marked them, sir,” said Roger drily. “And they seem to have marked me-for death!”

“I think you altogether misinterpret their glaring,” Daniel said, after verifying that the fat one and the skinny one were, in fact, attempting to set fire to Roger’s eyebrows with the heat of their scrutiny. “A she-wolf in the Thuringerwald stares thus at her prey, before pouncing. But it is not out of hate that the feral bitch of the north does so, but rather a cool understanding that it’s from the hapless rabbit, sheep, or what-have-you, that she is to derive her sustenance.”

“Oh, is that all they want? Money?”

“In a word, yes.”

“I’d supposed that they wanted me to draw out my sword and plunge it into my own vitals, or something, from the way they were looking at me.”

“No,” Daniel confirmed, “they want your money.”

“It is good to know this.”

“Why? Are you going to give them some of your money now?”

“That would be impolite,” said Roger, blushing at the very thought. “But I see no obstacle to giving them someone else’s.”

Finally they had drawn near enough that it was no longer the done thing for them to acknowledge anyone other than their (as yet uncrowned) King. For once Daniel got precedence over Roger, because of being a Regent; and his majesty even recognized him. “Dr. Vaterhouse of der Royal Society,” he rattled off, as he allowed Daniel to kiss his hand-the very last occasion, or so Daniel hoped, that Daniel would ever give his Puritan ancestors occasion to roll over in their graves. Daniel was so consumed by the horror of what he was doing, and by wondering whether he was going to catch anything from that hand, which had already been kissed, today, by half of the syphilitics in England, that he failed to attend to what the King was saying. The problem was that his majesty had jumped over to some other language-some language, that is, that he actually spoke-and Daniel had not kept up-had not re-tuned his ear to follow it. With his unkissed left hand, George was gesturing toward the windows in the back, or south wall of the house, which provided a pleasant enough view over a rising green lawn, crossed here and there by paths, and tufted with carefully managed outbreaks of trees. Jutting from the biggest and most elevated of these, off to the right, was the queer edifice known as the Royal Observatory: two bookends imprisoning one book. But other than that, few buildings were visible, as the whole point was for it to be a park.

Daniel, belatedly coming alive to the fact that he was being personally addressed in an as-yet-unidentified language by the King, got only a single word: Ruben. What did it mean? To rub something? Perhaps the King was remarking that the custodians of the Queen’s House had rubbed the windows very clean? Daniel was just beginning to nod when the King helpfully said “navet.” Daniel realized in some horror that he’d switched to French to make himself better understood-but Daniel still didn’t understand! Was he talking about the Navy? That would be reasonable in a way, since the activities of the Royal Observatory were of great importance to the Navy. Daniel kept nodding. Finally Bothmar intervened-Baron von Bothmar, who’d been the Hanoverian ambassador to the Court of St. James back in the days when Hanover and England had been different countries. “His majesty hates to see good land go to waste,” Bothmar translated, “and has been eyeing yonder open space all morning, wondering how it might be put to some practical use; the difficulty being that it inclines toward the north and does not, in consequence, receive good sunlight. Knowing that you, Dr. Waterhouse, are a man of great Natural-philosophick acumen, his majesty asks you whether you are in agreement with him in thinking that, in the springtime, one might, with some hope of success, plant on that ground Ruben-navets-turnips.”

“Tell his majesty that if I had a shovel I’d go plant some right now,” Daniel said hopelessly.

The King, having been made aware of this, blinked and nodded. He had got a distant look now in his eyes, which reflected the green light of the future turnip-patch. Daniel could almost see the man’s jowls fill up with saliva as he envisioned a grand turnip-feast in a year’s time.

Ravenscar was chuckling. “How your shovel-work would discomfit those prancing, Frenchified Tory courtiers,” he remarked, “who, seeing such an excellent plot of land as that, have not the wit to imagine any use for it save to parade about on their gaudy chevals.”

“The Marquis of Ravenscar,” von Bothmar explained, and Daniel now had to avert his gaze from the not especially appetizing spectacle of Roger planting a smooch on George’s hand.

When Daniel felt it was safe to look back, the King seemed to have been put in mind of something. He was casting about for an eye-line to the Duke of Marlborough, and presently got one-Marlborough was one of the few actual English people suffered to stand anywhere near the King of England. Much as iron filings stand up and get organized in the presence of a magnet, certain facts and memories that had been scattered round the King’s periwig came into alignment when his visual cortex was stimulated by the face of Marlborough. He harrumphed and began to burp out some phrases having to do with a soiree and a Vulkan that were translated into prose, and into English, by Bothmar. “His majesty has heard from my lord Marlborough that the Duke very much enjoyed your recent party, at which the famous Volcano was made to erupt. His majesty would fain witness this amusement. Not now. Later. But my lord Marlborough spoke well of how the Royal Mint has been looked after, and of the quality of the coinage. His majesty will require good men to look after the Treasury. Good men-not a good man. For such is the importance of this task that he has decided to change the tradition of appointing a Lord Treasurer, and place that office in commission. His majesty is pleased to nominate my lord Ravenscar First Lord of the Treasury. And he is also pleased to nominate Daniel Waterhouse a member of that same Commission.”